Too Many Cooks In Your Retirement "Soup"?

If I asked you to give the tagline for Timex, could you?  Probably.  But that was two taglines ago.

Just came across this post from Drew McLellan.  For those two people who don't know Drew, he's the guy who, in his own words, "gets branding and marketing and he desperately wants you to get it too"  The post is about Timex changing their tried and true tagline, "Takes a licking and keeps on ticking" to "Timex.  Life is ticking."  all because some new guy came in and said that he could do better.  That guy's since been fired and so has the tagline.  Now it's "Timex.  Be there now."  "Be there now?"  Can't any watch do that?  Heck, my cell phone can do that.  So can the clock in my car.  What's so special about that?

I guess what hit me immediately is that this is what so many people do with their money.  They sit down with one financial planner and put together a plan.  Things are going according to plan and then they go to a seminar.  Maybe it's because they're unhappy or maybe it's just the free meal.  Then they switch gears and go with the new guy.  That doesn't work out.  So, they go to another seminar...you get the picture?  What happens is that they end up with a shotgun approach to financial planning.  They've got duplications and ommissions everywhere.  Odds are that they end going up back to the original guy who put together a plan and ask him to sort it out.   Someone once said (I wish I could remember who.  It's buried somewhere in the 500+ pages of the latest version of "The Intelligent Investor".  So, most likely, it was Benjamin Graham.)  "A lot of bad advice is given free."  If you've got a plan that's working for you, one that can, in fact, "take a licking", stick with it.  These are confusing times but, a plan is a plan is a plan.